The difficulties of the negotiation in which Lord Spencer and Mr. Thomas Grenville were engaged, are very clearly stated in the following letter. It is perfectly evident from these curious revelations, that Austria and Prussia were pursuing a crooked and evasive policy in their diplomacy with England, that the vacillations and infirmity of purpose they betrayed left them open to the suspicion of insincerity, and that the affairs of both Courts were conducted by Ministers utterly deficient in all qualities of firmness and judgment, which the occasion imperatively demanded.
MR. THOMAS GRENVILLE TO LORD GRENVILLE.
(Private.) Vienna, Sept. 1st, 1794.
My dear Brother,
If M. de Thugut is waiting with impatience the result of M. de Merey's negotiation, you will easily believe that we have no less impatience to know your decisions upon that subject, though you will have seen that Lord Spencer and I have not been able to teach ourselves to wish that the pecuniary demands may, or ought to be, gratified by us. If they had confined themselves to asking only such a temporary assistance as might have given a more immediate spring to the vigorous movement which we are urging them to make, I should have been as little disposed as anybody could to withhold any practicable facilities of that description; but to the extent to which they steadily continue to point, I own I feel myself too little satisfied as to the equity of their claim upon us, and as to the probability of their acting fairly and manfully up to the great exertions which they ask from us, to entertain much disposition towards those demands.
They dwell certainly upon the difference which they state between loan and subsidy, and wish to prove to us that their offer of security upon the revenues of the Low Countries should, at least by us (who always insist on those territories remaining in the House of Austria), be accepted as a good and ample mortgage for the repayment of the sums which they want for this year and the next; but if it is true that they do not feel interested at heart in these possessions, or if they think us so earnest in our wishes on this subject, that they may safely throw the whole weight of it upon us, their offer of a hypothèque on those possessions takes a much more suspicious character; nor is it, perhaps, an unreasonable jealousy on my part to apprehend that they may wish you to have a mortgage of two millions on the Netherlands, as an inducement to you hereafter to give up some of your French acquisitions in the West Indies, in order to recover for them a country, in which you will have a larger pecuniary stake, added to the ordinary course of political observations.
Much at least of Thugut's conversation would seem to tally with this view of the matter. It is observable that he perpetually recurs to its being a settled point, that de façon ou d'autre the Netherlands will be secured to Austria at the peace, and yet he never seems (in his view of the military operations to be pursued) to consider them as a main object of defence, and is so little disposed to make them so, that he expresses much reluctance at the idea proposed, of engaging Austria to furnish so large an army, to act in that country, which he thinks might be better employed elsewhere. Add to this, his remarking that England might be satisfied by the irrecoverable detriment done to the navy and commerce of France, and his contrasting the difference in point of acquisitions made by Great Britain, with the total failure on the side of Austria; and it is no great refinement to suspect the whole of this to lead to an expectation that we may better buy back the Netherlands for them, than put them to the expense of defending them or regaining them; and that we should have an additional motive for sacrificing some of our conquests to this object, if we have two millions of money mortgaged upon it.
Of the advantage which may be expected at home from adopting this shape of lending upon security, rather than of furnishing a direct subsidy, I do not well know how to judge; but unless the security could be shown to be in itself substantial, and of a nature to be easily got at by those to whom it was due, I should doubt whether the public at home would be better reconciled to it than to a direct and acknowledged subsidy. The very small proportion of effect produced by the large payments this year to the King of Prussia, will create much indisposition to the incurring of a similar expense again, unless it can be shown to promise, upon good probable grounds, a much better return than we have had; and, generally speaking, I cannot but fear that the mere difference in point of exertion which we can hope from this country, may not turn out to be worth the purchase-money in the estimation of the country at large, though I should hope they might easily acquiesce in a very considerable exertion, if a great manifest exertion of strength, fairly disposable to the course of the war, could be procured by pecuniary aids. What inducement there may be to this measure, from any apprehension of the Emperor's withdrawing from the war, is another part of the question, upon which I can form no more correct judgment than belongs to the observation of a very short residence here.
Lord Malmesbury hints to me a suspicion of a proposed concert between the Emperor and the King of Prussia, to compel the Maritime Powers to make peace, though he appears to give no great credit to it. Certain it is, that in the month which we have past here, one of the most striking features of the conversation, both of Ministers and individuals, has been a hatred and aversion to Prussia, by Thugut, too, particularly marked towards Lucchesini, of whom he never scruples to speak to us in terms of the most unqualified dislike; so that as far as can be collected from what we hear, there ought to be no ground to suspect any plan of intimate concert between his Court and Berlin.
It is possible, to be sure, that independently of any such concert, the Government here, if unassisted by money from us, might endeavour to withdraw from the prosecution of the war; but, as we have had no reason to expect any ultimate success to the propositions which we brought here, we have endeavoured, as much as possible, to learn what their conduct would be in failure of the proposed Convention, and to consider them in all that we have said as equally bound to continue in their co-operations with us according to the existing agreement, whether any new arrangement should succeed or not. To this view they have not only acceded always in distinct terms, when urged by us, but they have frequently stated this of their own accord, confining themselves only to the observation, that their means are limited, and will no longer allow of the exertions which they wish; but solemnly protesting against any present idea of peace, and always expressing their belief that Prussia is now desirous of peace being made, because, in the present situation of things, it might probably be made to the disadvantage of Austria. Unless, therefore, their opinions should be disguised to a degree which I cannot well believe, or should undergo an entire change, I do not see what ground there is to suspect in them any intention of abandoning the war, though I can entertain no great hopes of such a vigorous prosecution of it as we might wish and expect from them.
There is but one opinion as to the Emperor's inclinations on this subject, and if his personal character had steadiness enough to influence the Government, his disposition to the true principles of the war would be a great security to us; at present, however, it is of little or no avail; and it is much to be lamented in times like the present, that though there is no dislike entertained to him, there is not either the respect or consideration which ought to be attached to his situation, to make it tell with any of the effects one wishes to derive from it. With respect to his Ministers, you have seen too much of our remarks upon the striking features of their conduct, to make it necessary for me in every letter to repeat them. Thugut is certainly the only efficient Minister here: very diligent and laborious in his office, he seems to have acquired an influence here by being the only man of business about the Court; and with this recommendation has reached a situation which the nobility of the country are mortified to see him hold, because he has no pretensions to hereditary rank, and because they have been used to see that office for many years filled by Prince Kavnitz. What we, however, miss in him is, either the disposition or capacity to see the present great crisis of Europe upon the large scale on which it should be looked at by the leading Minister of this empire; instead of which, we see in all our discussions a cold, narrow, and contracted view of this subject, infinitely too languid and little for the object, and made peculiarly unfavourable to our propositions, by the disinclination which he certainly feels to concur heartily with us in the great interests attached to the Austrian possession of the Low Countries. We have, it is true, obtained from him assurances of concerting an immediate plan for the relief of Valenciennes; but even this has not been obtained without many discouraging tokens of that total want of manly energy and direct dealing, without which all co-operation must necessarily be languid and feeble: always taking merit for having sent the most distinct orders to try the relief of Valenciennes, yet never taking the obvious mode of satisfying us by communicating those orders to us; maintaining as an argument for the loan, that without it the army cannot move, yet at the same time resisting our objections of the delay of waiting for answers from M. de Merey, by stating this movement as being actually in great forwardness, and not depending upon the loan for its execution; acquiescing in the change of command urged by us, and yet ever since that event reminding us that in his opinion this very change may defeat the operation which we wished to assist by it; gratifying our impatience at one time by counting up the days to the probable time of the desired movement, and then again stating that Clairfayt's army may be weakened too much to attempt it by his detaching, perhaps considerably, towards the side of Treves; complaining that the Austrians had been prevented from sending Blankenstein's corps towards Flanders, as they wished, by the Prussians having engaged it in their line of defence, and yet refusing to us a corps much more inconsiderable, and not involved in the objection—I mean the corps of Condé—a corps, too, which, as I have before observed, from their own statement of their want of money, they should have been glad to have seen transferred to the pay of another country.